


try to tempt my way in

by 1001cranes



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, Genderswap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:41:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kink meme fill - Eames disguises himself as a woman in a dream and seduces Arthur. Arthur knows who it is, via personality cues, or some inside joke she lets slip, or calling him darling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	try to tempt my way in

Arthur’s sitting quietly at the bar when she walks in and sits at the stool next to him. The bar is crowded, but not full, which makes her choice at least a little deliberate. The smile she gives him makes it obviously so. She asks the bartender to make her a pomegranate martini, and it’s no coincidence the red color matches her scarf and her lipstick. They’re bold, and so is the way she lets her foot rest against his leg.

Arthur sips at his scotch and water. They exchange smiles, and pleasantries. She compliments his cufflinks.

“They’re exquisite,” she sighs, and runs her finger over one. “And I must say, love, I so appreciate a _well_ -dressed man.”

Arthur’s forehead wrinkles. There’s a lilt to it, the way she says love – the tiniest hint of what might be an accent. Something mid-Atlantic. She’s not the type to call him love, he wouldn’t think. She’s a better dressed Ariadne, with the scarf around her neck, lovely heeled boots, American – he assumes American, they’re in –

It’s enough to set off warning bells in Arthur’s head. Teeny ones, but it’s all he needs these days. Cobb has him well-trained. There’s a minor mental checklist – he has no idea how he got here, of course. He unobtrusively fingers the die in his pocket. One of the corners is smoothed away, in reality; it’s not there now.

Arthur smiles at her. Someone’s in his head, that much is certain. They’ve put him in the bar of a hotel, he thinks, which means the building is probably high enough to jump off of. There’s also some impressive looking stemware in the bar, but it’s a rather nasty way to go. He’s done it that way once, when he was in a bit of a fix. And at any rate, he’d prefer to play it cool, and to find out what these people want.

“Could I buy you another drink?” Arthur asks, at his most courteous, with a hint of a smile, the tiniest flash of a dimple.

“Please,” she says, and he realizes he doesn’t know her name. Should he ask, he wonders, or would that make him seem too aware? He’s never played the Mark outside of training.

Arthur signals for the bartender, watches him mix another fruity thing and pour it over ice. Even though Arthur’s realized, there are no tactical teams bursting out of black vans and into the building – that’s amateur stuff, the kind of training you get from a crash-course in extraction defense. Arthur’s projections are calm, like Arthur is calm. The projections in the bar continue their conversations, they drink their drinks; the ones on the street keep walking. They’re searching quietly, but not obviously.

The most common ways to extract information involve a Forger bringing in a friendly face, either to convince the Mark to share the information in rapport, or to be used as leverage. There’s no one around Arthur recognizes, which makes him think they’re attempting a straight-up seduction. Strange. Was it a rush-job, something done on the fly, with half-assed intel? It must be, he thinks, if they’re trying to seduce him with her. She’s a knock-off of Ariadne – brown hair, brown eyes, freckles. Heart-shaped face and cupid-bow lips. So saccharine, so cute, so _female_. So utterly wrong he can't help but be amused. One of her hands is resting just above his knee. She’s smiling at him, her head tipped down, flirting and seductive. It’s his cue, he realizes, and he places his hand over hers.

“I don’t mean to be too forward,” he begins, “but would you like to go upstairs? I have a suite.”

“Sounds perfect,” she says, and its almost a purr. They walk towards the elevator, her hand on the small of his back while he searches in his pockets for a room key. 915. He presses the button for floor nine and she attacks him; pushes him against the wall and ravages his mouth with hers, some hot, wet assault he isn’t prepared for. He almost shoves her away, out of habit, but digs his fingers into her shoulders instead.

The elevator dings, and she smoothes the lapels of his jacket and winks before stepping out. Arthur opens the door to the suite smoothly, and gestures her in first; he can get a decent sweep of the room that way, just in case.

“A gentleman,” she murmurs. “Why am I not surprised.” She pushes his towards the chair, one hand sliding under his jacket - checking for a gun? She’s kissing him purposefully, forcefully. A little smugly, he thinks. And there’s something about the way – something about the _chair_ , in particular –

“Eames,” Arthur says immediately, because once it dawns it hits him like a lightning bolt. “You’re not fooling _anybody_.”

In the blink of an eye, the woman is gone and Eames stands in her place.

He smiles cheekily. “Left that a little late in the day, didn’t we, sweetheart?” he says, and Arthur resists the urge to smack his smug little face. “What gave it away?”

“In the bar,” he says. “You called me love. And – really, Eames, my cufflinks?”

Eames sniffs. “You’re saying the way into your pants isn’t through your cufflinks?”

Arthur concedes he may have a point.

“ _And_ ,” Eames continues, “you figured out all the way back in the bar, and you just called it off now? I didn’t realize I’d nailed your type so perfectly.” There’s a trace of bitterness in Eames’ voice, and Arthur has to swat Eames’ hand to keep him from unbuttoning Arthur’s shirt further.

“You didn’t,” Arthur blusters. “I wasn’t – it didn’t seem right exactly, but I didn’t figure out it was you until just now.”

“Just now?” Eames says skeptically. “A lucky guess, then? Or am I just the only Forger you know?”

“Don’t be stupid. You’re just the only one I would have let get this far,” Arthur says, and he’s surprised how much he means it.

For a moment Eames only blinks at him.

“I think maybe I knew,” Arthur says quietly. “Maybe I just wanted – were you going to go through with it? Was it just a game?”

Eames sits back on his heels. “Maybe,” he says quietly. “And no. You know I haven’t much in the way of impulse control, darling, _really_. I wanted you, and I thought maybe I’d found a way to get what I wanted.” He shrugs, gnaws on the cuticle of one thumb. “But you’ve beaten my at my own game, well done.”

It boggles the mind how occasionally dense Eames can be.

“How long did you put me under for?” Arthur asks.

Eames makes a little moue with his lips. “You were taking a nap in the back room. I figured five minutes was opportunistic enough.”

Arthur stands, yanks Eames up by his horrendous jacket – dear god, is that _herringbone tweed_ , really? – and drags him towards the bed.

“So we have a half hour, give or take,” Arthur says, and throws the offensive jacket to the other side of the room.


End file.
